


Torcello

by Tyger_Tyger



Series: Battistero [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Basically Battistero Part 2, Irresponsible use of Google Translate, M/M, Potential for future smut, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Scarification (mentioned), Strangulation, Work In Progress, i suck at summaries
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-05-22 10:58:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6076797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyger_Tyger/pseuds/Tyger_Tyger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will and Hannibal continue their reunion around Italy. This follows on from Battistero, so won't make a huge amount of sense if you haven't read it, but is basically a 'what could have happened' after the end of Season 2. </p><p>Angsty angstness occurs. Plus more art. And Italy. I'm taking liberties with Hannibal's past this time. Sorry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta

**Author's Note:**

> This is a WIP so apologies for how long it's going to take. Hope you like it. If you like it then it might make me write faster!
> 
> Feedback received with love (and chewed nails).

Will had expected to incur one of Hannibal’s raised eyebrow looks of disdain at his suggestion, but apparently some things went beyond cliche all the way back around to classic. It appeared that one of those things was drinking coffee at the oldest cafe in Europe while a four piece orchestra played classical music in St Mark’s Square. He did earn a put-upon sigh from Hannibal when he ordered the hazelnut cream coffee thick with chocolate spread, and Hannibal wilfully ignored him when he scooped up a finger-full of heavy froth and licked it clean, instead sipping at his own espresso and snapping out the fold of the newspaper.

Will smiled to himself and swiped open the iPad to check his emails. He needed to respond to an email Alana had sent the previous week, but hadn’t quite found the courage to do so yet. He had decided this would be the message in which he’d tell her he wasn’t planning on returning to the States, and to ask her to arrange for new homes for the dogs. He knew she would keep Winston and Buster herself, but in the same way that he had avoided dealing with problems since he was a kid by moving somewhere new, he was now avoiding having to face the inevitable questions his decision would raise. 

It had been raining earlier, and the paved ground of the square reflected the columns of the buildings like ice. Venice was greyer than Will had imagined, with more pigeons and beggars. The water smelled of stagnation even in the colder weather, not like the heat and decay and growth of the bayou.

“We’ll take a Bateo later, out over the Lagoon to Torcello.” Hannibal said, turning a page of the paper.

“Is that where the Assunta place is?”

“It is where Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta is, yes. There are some magnificent mosaics there, some would argue even superior to the Battistero in Florence.”

“I’ll have to take your word on that, they all look like sparkly pretty squares to me.”

“Are you intentionally trying to antagonise me, Will?”

“No. I’m trying to make you laugh. It doesn’t seem to be working.”

“Why would I find poor taste and aesthetic ignorance amusing?”

“What’s poor taste about this coffee? It’s delicious.”

Hannibal looked at the offending drink, chocolate smeared over it’s glass with metal rim.

“It’s ostentatious.”

“Ostentatious!” Will laughed. “Han, I’ve seen you garnish a bowl of soup with porcupine quills and you think my mocha is ostentatious?”

Hannibal gave him a levelling look over his glasses. 

“Why don’t you write that email to Alana instead of attempting to irritate me.” he said, returning to his paper. Will opened his mouth to protest, to question how Hannibal could possibly know about the email he was planning on sending, but he heard all the words forming in his mind in a truculent voice and sighed instead.

“You don’t ever stop analysing me, do you.” he said.

“I find you interesting, Will.” Hannibal replied with a small smile. “Why else do you think I keep you around?”

Will scoffed loudly and shook his head. 

“I need to - do this somewhere else.” he said, picking up the iPad and walking towards the bell tower. He instinctively lowered his face to avoid the outstretched arms clasping camera phones, paranoid that someone would inadvertently tip-off the FBI’s analysts to their whereabouts with a random holiday snap on social media. He agreed that Hannibal’s idea that wearing glasses and a hat was enough to fool the facial recognition software, but once Jack found out he wasn’t coming home he’d get curious. And Jack didn’t have much else to do these days - Will wouldn’t put it past him to spend hours scouring through tourist photos in the hope of seeing Hannibal in the background. 

Will sat on a step and lent against the column, looked out across the square at the people and the pigeons and the life which pulsed here. A floating city constantly at war with it’s own arterial supply, stopping water here to make it flow there. A faded country rid of it’s independence by foreigners who could never know what it meant to be Venetian. Rotting wood and crumbling brick raising and sinking in the silt, never far from the edge but defiantly floating still despite it. It felt like an appropriate place from which to make a life changing decision which he would probably live to regret to the core of his being. 

He felt like he was floating lately, had done since they left Florence, like they were living in some surreal bubble of space slightly removed from reality. As though he’d been on holiday and just decided not to take the arranged flight home. He had anticipated it would all come crashing down around them rather quickly, that one or both would loose patience with the other and either walk away or do something much worse. He’d been waiting for it to happen, but it hadn’t. The worst consequence of any argument they’d had was slammed doors and one occasion when Will had thrown a plate at Hannibal’s head, only just missing him. Each time Hannibal had calmly left the room and refused to be goaded by Will’s pursuit, and Will had eventually calmed down and they’d returned to this strange equilibrium. Hannibal said they were like two tigers learning to share territory. Will had rolled his eyes.

He kept the email short and to the point, used language he knew Alana would take at face value without trying to tease out a deeper meaning. He dropped in the phrase PTSD, said that Europe felt like a different world where he could make a fresh start, that he wasn’t running away but starting again. He provided enough of an explanation about consulting with local PDs and guest lecturing at universities that there wouldn’t be any questions raised about how he was surviving financially, and gave her the details of the realtor who was already instructed with his wishes for what to sell and what to store and where. He told her how he wanted the dogs re-homed, asked her to keep Winston and to send pictures so he could see how he was doing. 

He re-read it, satisfied it contained enough self deprecation for her to interpret as apology and regret and enough reluctant admission of pain for her to feel the blame she mistakenly placed upon herself, and would therefore redirect at Jack and the FBI in general. She’d make sure they all knew he was making the right decision and that they wouldn’t try to contact him for fear of a lawsuit. 

He glanced over across the square at Hannibal, watched him for a moment as he gracefully drank the last of his coffee and refolded the newspaper to read the back page. Will purposefully didn’t acknowledge the the way his chest felt like it was expanding or the way his stomach attempted to flip over when he thought about what they had together, whatever this was. He ran his thumb over the lowest of the scars on his wrist, the ones which formed the nose of the stag there. He pressed send on the email and logged out, flicking the cover over the screen and standing up in one motion. 

Hannibal looked up with a patient smile when he returned to the table. Will slid the iPad into his bag and picked up the glass to drink the rest of the thickened creamy chocolate coffee.

“Jeez. This is like sludge when it cools down.”

“Yes.” Hannibal said, standing up and picking up his own satchel. “And now you have chocolate sludge around your mouth.” He reached out with his thumb and wiped at the corner of Will’s lips, and the action was brimming with such casual affection that Will caught his breath and hid it with an awkward smile while turning away.

“Come on. You were right about the tourists, let’s find somewhere quieter.” Will said, shouldering his backpack.

—————————

They walked back through the strange floating streets and walk ways, over one brick thick bridges spanning the canal. Pied men pushed gondolas between domino stacked buildings strung with lines of washing in the damp air, and the red walls were striped in green slime at the height the last aqua alta reached. 

Will felt the reassuring closeness of Hannibal in his periphery as they made their way in and out of the thicker crowds through to the narrow alleys and back out to the boat station. Will had stopped trying to speak Italian and instead happily let Hannibal do the speaking for them. He didn’t think too much about the inherent trust that suggested he had in him. On the vaporetto Will watched Hannibal as the breeze lifted the hair from his forehead. It was strange to think of him as the same man he had known in Baltimore, though of course he was - at once familiar and intrinsically different. This was the man who had framed him and imprisoned him, both literally and within the raging madness of his shattering mind, who had taken from him the few people he had cared for, had manipulated his world as though all the players were marionettes tugged by his strings. More like shadow puppets, Will thought, and Hannibal the light source dictating every movement. Yet in his anger and in the hatred he had at times felt for him he couldn’t ignore the pull towards Hannibal, and Will supposed this was how the moth felt, fluttering ever closer to the flame. 

“What’s on your mind, Will?” Hannibal asked gently, still looking out over the water.

“I was thinking about wings catching fire.” Will replied, glancing quickly over the others on the boat to reassure himself that they weren’t paying him any undue attention. 

“Burning wings.” Hannibal said, turning to face him and catching his eye. “Did you know that during the Blitz in London the fires raged so hot that any nearby pigeon’s wing feathers often ignited from the heat alone. They would try to fly away but their flight only fuelled the flames.”

“I know the feeling.” 

The path beside the canal on Torcello was narrow, and with far fewer buildings the island felt more like countryside and Will could breathe a bit easier. They walked in easy silence, Will instinctively scanning the waters edge for herons which would show there were fish. He had a sudden and ridiculous desire to take Hannibal fishing, and with a wrench of painful nostalgia realised he would not have those peaceful hours again, just him and his dogs and the fish and the flies, the swish of the line through the air and the gentle tap of the feathered hook on the water. 

“These churches all look like barns.” Will said as they approached the cathedral.

“Very few barns contain eleventh century Byzantine mosaics. Nor the skulls of saints. St Celilia’s skull is reputed to be kept here.”

“Which one was she?”

Hannibal gave him the kind of amused half smile which began around his eyes and never quite made it to his lips.

“Did you not learn your Saints at Sunday School, Will?”

“Methodist.” Will replied. “Dad didn’t really go much, so I went even less.”

“She is the Patron Saint of musicians, martyred by beheading. Apparently she lived three days post execution, and once interred her body did not decay.”

“You left your harpsichord behind in Baltimore.” Will said, pausing in the small gravel courtyard in front of the building. There were odd shaped stones on the ground, the remains of columns and a walled garden to the side. Will could smell the wet soil, getting ready for spring. 

“Yes.” 

“How did you get your books to Florence?” Will toed at the wet grit beneath his shoe.

Hannibal looked towards the cathedral, voice calm and easy as though they were discussing the weather.

“I had already planned on leaving. I had arranged for a rather specialist courier service to transport a number of things I had placed in storage in preparation.”

“Not the harpsichord.”

“They are rather delicate creatures, unfortunately prone to damage and not easy to transport.”

Will saw the way Abigail’s blood had spilled from her throat, splashing down to the floor as she quietly begged with eyes fixed on Will, as though he were the one who could either take or preserve her life. 

Will turned towards the church and walked away, and Hannibal didn’t follow him.

———————

It was cooler inside the cathedral, the walls a faded peach colour in the afternoon light. Will made his eyes follow the ordered patterns of the floor tiles until his mind began to calm. He leant against one of the swirled marble pillars, pressed his head back against it and looked up at the timber ceiling. Half an hour must have passed before he saw Hannibal walk through the doors and approach him. Will closed his eyes and smiled sadly, felt the closeness of Hannibal standing beside him. 

“You mind is elsewhere today.” Hannibal said.

“I told Alana I’m not going back.”

“Yes. And that decision is making you question why you are here with me, despite all I have forced you to endure.”

Will allowed the quiet of the cathedral to surround them. Hushed voices spoke in a language he didn’t recognise, and he heard a camera shutter click somewhere behind them. 

“I really want to hurt you right now.” 

“I noticed.”

Will screwed his eyes shut and rubbed his fingers into them behind his glasses. 

“So.” he said, pushing away from the pillar. “What’s so special about these mosaics?”

“Have you not looked at them yet?” Hannibal asked, looking towards the wall which glowed a dull gold.

“I was mainly looking at the floor. And the ceiling - it reminds me of a boat.”

“Fitting for a Venetian ceiling.”

They walked beneath it towards the tall wall which glimmered where the light caught the tiny golden tiles. It was nowhere near as overwhelming as the Battistero, but the detail was precise in a way Will found unnerving.  

“The crucified Christ above, the resurrected Christ below, and Christ the King at the centre, enthroned on the seat of Final Judgement. His right and left hands bare the wounds of crucifixion, to demonstrate that we will all be judged by the Christ who has borne our sins and experienced the very depths of human suffering. And below those who are sorted to the right and to the left are rewarded and punished accordingly.”

“The devil is blue again.” Will said quietly, walking towards the bottom right of the piece. White haired and mad eyed, he sat on a thrown formed from the heads of monsters eating men whole, in an expanse of flame and fire while angles pushed sinners down beneath and small blue winged demons tormented them further. “Why is there a child sat in the devil’s lap?”

“Some believe he is the antichrist, but it is one of the most ambiguous images in Byzantine art. Some think that the small figure himself is the devil, and the blue ogre is simply the disguise he wears to allow people their beliefs that anything truly evil could not look and sound like them, but must be monstrous.”

“I wonder which one of those theories you prefer.” Will said somewhat sarcastically. Hannibal smiled despite himself.

“I do admit that I prefer the elegance of the latter.”

“Because you relate to it. No one saw you because you were so well disguised, in plain sight. The Ripper was your blue crazed monster whose strings you pulled. Look at how the devil’s hand is held out in a mirror of the smaller figure's - he’s controlling his movements.”

“Yes.” Hannibal replied, sounding slightly breathless. “Conducting the performance within the lake of fire.”

“Where do bad folks go when they die.” Will said absentmindedly, watching how the red tiles caught the light and shimmered.

“What did you say?”

“It’s a song - ‘Where do bad folks go when they die? The don’t go to heaven where the angels fly, they go to a lake of fire and fry.’ You reminded me of it.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask who the ‘artist’ was if that is the case.” he replied with obvious distain. 

“Sorry Han,” Will said, unable to hide his grin as he saw the look of distaste on Hannibal’s face. “Nirvana, MTV Unplugged, circa ‘93ish. At least that’s the version I know, you’d hate it. Cobain’s voice all stretched and rasping. Grunge was kind of easy for me in college, it gave me an excuse to be as insociable as I wanted.”

“It is fortunate we did not know each other in our youth. I doubt we would have liked each other.”

“What were you like?”

“Headstrong and arrogant.” Hannibal replied. “I was accustomed to having things and people my own way. I would have felt threatened by your ability to unsettle me, not intrigued.”

“I think you’re a little unsettled sometimes now.” Will said, voice more serious than he intended it to sound. Hannibal looked at him for a few moments, face somber but tight around his eyes.

“Yes.” he said quietly. “Sometimes I think you may be right.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angst. With a side of angst. Will has the tiger by the tail. 
> 
> Hope you like it! Feedback received with love (and chewed nails...)

They got back to the small apartment around sunset, and Hannibal stood on the balcony to watch the air turn bronze and gild the water. The walls felt too close, the ceiling too low, and Will wanted to be somewhere else. He barely noticed Hannibal’s movements around the rooms, instead tried to loose himself in one of the old worn books in the lounge. He picked out the words he recognised and allowed the images they created in his mind to distract him. 

“I’ve run you a bath.” Hannibal said from the doorway. Will looked up at where he stood, shirt loose over light trousers and the evening light lit his hair almost auburn over his small smile. Will could see it didn’t reach his eyes. He wanted to tell him to fuck off, but realised how petulant that would sound.

“Why have you done that?” he said instead. Hannibal almost shrugged and walked towards him where he sat at the table. He reached down and pressed Will’s knee still where he had been unconsciously bouncing his foot up and down.

“Because hot water is very good at relieving tension.” 

Will huffed half a laugh and let the book close.

“I don’t really do baths. Showers are better, but I guess the plumbing’s pretty ropey around here, huh?”

“Perhaps.” Hannibal replied. “Humour me. You’ll feel better afterwards.”

Will let the water take the weight of his arms and leant his head back against the rim. He felt the heat soaking through his muscles, his skin just on the edge of too hot so that the warmth was all his mind could focus on. He wondered how long he could stay there before Hannibal came looking for him. Maybe until the water had cooled. He tried to remember the last time he had been in a bath for any reason other than necessity. When he was a kid he’d had to share the water with his Dad, Will in first for a quick scrub and out again while the water was still warm so his old man could get in to soak off the oil and the engine grease. It was the kind of family intimacy he’d always been uncomfortable with - had never understood how ordinary family’s functioned with so much easy co-dependancy. His Dad had told him he’d have understood better if he’d had little brother or sister to look after, and after that Will was glad his Dad remained a perpetual bachelor. It was bad enough sharing bathwater with one other person.

Hannibal had said her name was Mischa. Will saw him then, face rounded in childhood without the angled cheek and jaw bones, smiling wide with the occasional gap between his teeth as a podgy hand grabbed at his hair. Once the image was there it wouldn’t leave, and like ink through blotting paper it fingered it’s way through the fibres of Will’s mind until it was thick and tacky with implications and conjecture. 

Hannibal had only said her name to him once, and at the time Will had been preoccupied with the concept of unexpected fatherhood. Of a child destroyed before it had ever really existed. A hypothetical baby he had been tricked into fathering which had been scraped away, taken in an act of horrific abuse against Margot. Betrayal upon betrayal upon betrayal. Will had heard the paternal tone in Hannibal’s voice when he said her name, and had recognised it as his own feelings towards Abigail. He had assumed the pain in Hannibal’s eyes when he pressed him on it had been guilt for taking her from Will. Because they were both her fathers.

But the lie of that seemed obvious to him now, sat with his forehead on his knees in the cooling water, now almost body temperature so he only felt it as cold when he moved through it. The temperature of blood. Will’s assumption that Hannibal had seen something of his sister in Abigail seemed so glaringly wrong now he wondered how he had believed it unchallenged for so long. It had just been easier for Hannibal to foster Will’s feelings for Abigail if he made him believe they shared them. Once betrayed, Hannibal had simply wanted to hurt Will in the most painful way he could imagine. To take from Will what had been taken from him. And he could never have killed Abigail if he had identified her with his sister. The Ripper was fundamentally selfish; only interested in his own gratification and survival. Not one for self-inflicted wounds which would actually cause himself damage. 

There was a gentle tap on the bathroom door, and Hannibal’s voice from the other side.

“Will? The water must be cold by now. Are you alright?” 

The handle turned and Hannibal stepped half inside the bathroom, stopping when he met Will’s eye. 

“What did you do to him?” Will’s voice had a rasping edge, his throat at an odd angle with his temple resting on his knee.

“Who are you talking about?”

“The man who killed Mischa.”

Hannibal’s face became incredibly still, not unlike the surface of the bath water. Blank and cold, inhuman. His gaze dropped after a few moments, and he turned slowly and closed the door behind him as he left the room.

—————————-

Will had fallen asleep on the couch with a woollen blanket wrapped around him. Hannibal had been in the bedroom when he’d gotten out of the bath, and he had no intention of joining him. The inherent danger of the situation wasn’t lost on him. He was pulling the tiger by the tail, but the thought of those crescent claws sinking into his chest didn’t fill him with dread or fear. It felt like a certainty he’d been avoiding, and now at least there was some peace to be found in the submission to it. His mind had slithered amongst the monsters for so long it almost felt natural to curl up and sleep in the next room to the worst of them. 

He had lay half propped up on cushions and listened to the water constantly lapping at the city beneath him, waiting for sleep. His thoughts drifted from water to fire, half conscious imagery of himself standing in the blazing lake from the mosaic, the flames licking up his body to engulf him. Nothing left but a skull in the ashes. He must had drifted to sleep, because he woke to the feeling of Hannibal nearby.

He sat on the floor leaning back against the couch, arms resting on his knees pulled up near his chest, barefoot and staring towards the window. The moonlight reflected up from the waters below and made the room bright with silver, and Will saw it reflected in Hannibal’s eyes, his hair falling loosely over his forehead.

Will reached out and gently touched his shoulder, which seemed to slowly bring him back to himself.

“I woke and you weren’t in bed.” he said, voice strangely flat.

“Needed some space.” Will said, and cleared his throat to try and get the sleep out of his voice. 

“Space.” Hannibal said, voice slow and distant. “There is an eternity of space between us, even when we are beside each other. Matter is essentially empty space, if you were to compress the entirety of the human race to it’s actual matter it would be the size of a sugar cube. We are moths inside a cathedral, with too much space to loose ourselves in.”

“You’re not used to feeling lonely. You still find it unnerving that I can make you feel that way.”

“Especially when you are still here.” 

“You think I’m going to leave.”

Hannibal was silent for a moment. 

“You are thinking about the your decision to stay, and therefore are also thinking about the alternative.”

“What is my alternative, Han? I can’t go back to what I was, you’ve made sure of it. I would see you everywhere, you would be inside my head at every crime scene. If I’m going to drown in you I might as well do it here.” Will said, voice too tired for any anger to seep into it. He saw the skin of Hannibal’s arms had prickle into goosebumps and wanted to curl up with him under the blanket and not have this conversation.

“As I you. Drowning is an apt metaphor.”

“I’m not going to say I’ll stay with you. I don’t know if I can, or even if I want to. Some days I look at you and all I see is your knife at Abigail’s throat, slicing open the scar her father gave her. Other days I can’t imagine breathing without you beside me.”

Hannibal turned his head to look at him, frowning slightly in the dim light.

“You are not usually so free with your thoughts. I tend to have to work harder for them.”

Will shrugged and sat up further, pulling the blanket closer around himself.

“Yeah, well. Maybe I want something in return.”

“What would that be?” Hannibal asked. Will sighed and looked out towards the dark city. There were white sheets on one of the washing lines between two of the nearby buildings, moving gently in the breeze. They looked like grey ghosts, flickering between dream and reality.

“Tell me what happened to your sister.”

Hannibal was still for a moment, and then straightened his back, his face covered in too much shadow for Will to see clearly.

“Why would you want me to do that?” he asked flatly. 

Will didn’t really have an answer for that, other than he wanted to know. He needed to know - as though the answer could on some level explain why Hannibal had taken Abigail from him twice, and justify why Will still wanted him in spite of that. He braced himself, anticipating the reaction his next words would illicit.

“Because I need to know if you killed Abigail because she was too much or not enough like Mischa.”

Hannibal moved quickly. He had Will pinned beneath the weight of his body and in the tangles of the blanket before Will had managed to get his own feet under himself. He struggled against the grip of Hannibal’s legs around his body until Hannibal got his forearm pressed hard against his throat, forcing his head back by pushing up under his jaw. Will’s breath was strained from the pressure on his neck and chest, and he tried to get his arm free but Hannibal grabbed it with his other hand and twisted it painfully. Will tried to move his head but Hannibal pressed his forehead against his temple and hissed a few words Will couldn’t understand before speaking more clearly.

“You ask something you have no comprehension of. How dare you think you can toy with things you don’t understand, like a clumsy child trying to pluck the wings off a fly.”

“Then make me understand.” Will said, voice tight and low as he tried to take a breath. 

Hannibal’s lips curled in a snarl, and Will couldn’t help but look at his teeth. Hannibal’s eyes were so close to Will’s they were almost just a blur of dark pupil, his breath hissing between clenched teeth as he watched Will struggle for air beneath him. 

“You will never understand.” he growled, sliding his arm down over Will’s chest to instead grip his throat in his hand, releasing his windpipe but compressing the arteries either side. He pressed Will’s twisted hand to the back of the couch and pulled him forward by his neck, and suddenly Will’s other arm was free and he clawed at the fingers around his throat. “You will never understand. It is not yours to know.”

Will grabbed a fistful of Hannibal’s hair and pulled him forward, breathlessly kissing at his mouth, his bared teeth. Hannibal stilled, his grip loosening slightly until he shoved Will forcefully back against the coach. 

“Is that was this is, Will? You goad me to anger because you just want me to fuck you?” Hannibal hissed, voice low and dangerous. Will frowned, felt his face grimace as he tried to shake his head, lips saying no when he had no room to form the words. Hannibal lowered his hand, repositioned it to allow Will’s jaw to move.

“No, Han.” he said, voice hoarse and messy with emotion. “I just need to know why.” He screwed his eyes shut and felt the tears brim over. 

“Why what? Why you lay your loyalties with a man who used you to his own foolish end? Why a job was more important than the promise you made to take care of her?”

Will’s fist swung and connected with Hannibal’s cheek before he even had time to process the movement, but Hannibal’s grip on him barely wavered, even as his head twisted with the force of the impact. He half smiled, dark amusement huffing a laugh from him as he tongued the cut on the inside of his lip his incisor had made. 

“You still fail to accept your responsibility for the events then?” 

“Fuck you.” 

Hannibal smiled. Blood pooled in the corner of his mouth and dripped down his chin. 

“I killed Abigail to punish you, dear Will. You must know that.”

“No!” Will hissed, trying to raise his hand again but Hannibal pinned his arm back with his elbow so that Will could only slap uselessly at his shoulder. “No.” he said, quieter around a sobbing breath. 

“Yes, Will. You can try to deflect the blame back to me by groping for dubious parallels with things you imagine happened in my past, but that does not change the truth. Had you not betrayed me then Abigail would be with us, here.”

Will moaned a grieving noise beneath Hannibal’s hand, tried to buck Hannibal off of him, writhed his limbs to try to free himself, but Hannibal was a solid force pressing down on him. His grip tightened around Will’s throat, and Will felt his face strain from the obstruction to his blood flow. His head throbbed with the noise of this heart desperately trying to get the blood beyond the tightening vice of Hannibal’s hand. Will met his eyes then, saw the disdain, thought this must be the last thing some of the Ripper’s victims had seen - at least those he’d deigned worthy enough to look at as the life slipped from them. Beneath the distance were the embers of rage, banked on top of the hurt caused by whatever insult he’d felt was committed against him. Rudeness, dismissal or crudeness. But not now, not as Will's vision began to darken around the edges and the white noise of strangulation filled his brain. Now in those eye he saw pain from betrayal, regret for a hand forced by another's actions, and loss so deep but no longer dormant, reawakened by the prospect of loosing the life Hannibal now held on the edge of consciousness. 

Will stopped struggling. He remembered his Sunday School teacher, all kind smiles and flowery perfume. She'd said when God was knocking at the door it was harder to resist than to give in. There was peace in submission. Will felt his arms fall limply at his sides, closed his eyes and gave in to dark waiting to pull him down.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taking liberties. Apologies. Smut will ensue.

Will’s eyes opened slowly to pin pricks of static swirling across his vision. Hannibal knelt before him on the floor, arms held stiffly by his sides. He stood suddenly, and was back in front of the couch again while Will’s head was still groggy and spinning.

“What the hell, Han?”

“Can you swallow, Will?” he asked quietly. “I’m not sure if there is damage to your trachea.”

“Fuck off.” Will said, swiping Hannibal away from him with a heavy arm and standing, lurching into a stumble as he lost his balance, head swimming. Hannibal caught him around the hips as he began to fall, but Will tore away from him with a wordless sound and made it almost to the table before his feet betrayed him and he landed flat on his ass. 

“Fucking stay there, Han. I mean it.” he said, half turning around and pointing back towards Hannibal. 

Hannibal froze as a sheepdog does - unbearably poised to launch into instinctive behaviour but prevented by adherence to discipline. His face was unreadable, but his eyes worked their way over Will’s face and neck in the dim light.

“I frequently underestimate the affect you can have on me.” he said quietly. 

Will sighed and rested his head in his hands, elbow on his knees.

“If you are feeling light headed you should lean your head forward to -”

“Go fuck yourself.” Will replied hoarsely. 

“Will you allow me to examine you to ensure no harm has been done?”

“No.”

“Will, I -”

“No!” he shouted, voice rough as he started to cough. 

Hannibal stood in silence as Will remained on the floor. After a couple of minutes he hauled himself up against the table, shouting a noise to keep Hannibal on the other side of the room. 

“You don’t get to do both. You don't get to show me kindness after cruelty, you only get to be one or the other.” Will said, closing his eyes and leaning back against the table.

“I wonder which you prefer sometimes. You seen intent to goad me to cruelty even against my own will and predisposition to it.”

“You are such an asshole. I’m going to bed. You’re not.”

Will walked out of the room and let the door slam closed behind him.

———————  
Hannibal placed the cafetiere on the hotplate and listened to the water steam up through the coffee. His composure was slipping; but he knew how to maintain it, even when it became a struggle. A change to the process didn’t need to change the outcome. He was guarding a painful truth out of instinct, as a feral creature will guard an injured paw from a stranger who could heal or crush it. 

Will had an irrepressible urge to care for those stray dogs; to take them in and make them well. His concern for Abigail had bordered on the inappropriate; his acquiescence to protect her guilt had crossed over that boundary. He had been attracted to Margot and her noble victimhood; he had avenged what had been done to her far beyond the remit of the role he had been playing for Hannibal’s benefit.

Hannibal poured the coffee into a short cup, took it to the window. Dawn was beginning to bleach it’s way into the sky. The ever present gulls and pigeons were beginning to stir. He looked towards the closed bedroom door, behind which Will was inevitably sleeping fitfully, if at all. 

The truth is a weapon, and can be a very precise manipulator if applied properly. He sipped the coffee, still slightly too hot. Hannibal pushed down the thought that he may no longer know the exact ends to which his manipulations were now intended. 

———————

Will stirred as Hannibal opened the bedroom door, but from the darkness around his eyes it was obvious he had not just been woken. He regarded Hannibal blankly and looked towards the curtains paleing with the morning light, but he did not turn away. Hannibal placed a cup of coffee on the bedside table. 

“That’s cheating.” Will said, voice grainy. “You know I’ll never refuse good coffee.”

“Yes.” Hannibal smiled and sat gently on the edge of the bed. “It’s your preferred blend, I brought it with us from Florence incase I couldn’t find similar here.”

“Did you.” Will said, turning to look at him with something in his eyes which seemed just out of reach. They sat in silence for a time until Hannibal let his eyes lower to his hands, which had at some point become clasped, knuckles white from the tight grip. He released them and placed them palm down on his thighs, unsure if Will had seen the motion. Will reached out and placed his own hand there, tentative, and this was the part which usually followed a slip in the equilibrium they had forged, when Will played that heady mix of seduction and submission. He let his fingers drift to the inner seam of Hannibal’s loose pyjamas and gently followed the hem up. Hannibal took his hand, slipped their fingers together and raised it to kiss along his knuckles, down towards the fingertips. 

“I was seven years old.” Hannibal said quietly, folding Will’s hand between his own. “When Misha was born.”

Will’s eyes widened slightly, but there was no other change to this expression. His face was soft, gentle in the way Hannibal imagined it had been when he listened to Abigail confess the sins she had wanted him to absolve her of, while she kept her secrets close. 

“She was premature, and the local hospital was not well equipped. My father was a doctor and was close to the right people of influence in local government. When they brought her home a month later I couldn’t believe that this tiny doll was a real baby. My mother was ill, weak from the birth and complications which followed, and my father took me aside and told me I had to help care for Mischa. That I was responsible for her.”

Hannibal paused without realising, his eyes gone somewhere else in silence and time. Will slowly sat up in bed and moved closer, maintaining his slight grip on Hannibal’s hand.

“You felt like a father to her, from a young age.”

Hannibal looked at him, face remarkably blank for a moment before his lips moved into a small sad smile. 

“I was fascinated by her fingers. I could not comprehend her fingernails, they seemed impossibly small. And she would grip my finger so hard, despite her size. That was how we were, as she grew. Her little hand always holding my finger as she learned to toddle around. I was a quick tempered child, but I had much more patience with her. Making her smile or laugh seemed like the most rewarding achievement.” 

Will let the silence spread slow around them. Hannibal’s expression became empty, and when he spoke again his voice had a level distance to it.

“She was three years old. The whole family was always expected to attend the social gatherings of the local KGB officials, but I had rowed with my father that afternoon and locked myself away in my bedroom with my paints and brushes. The driver of the other car was drunk enough to think he would not get caught if he drove away. Our parents were killed instantly, more or less. But Mischa survived the crash. It was winter, the farmer found her in the morning, hands stiffly clinging to our mother. She had died of exposure, cold and alone with the dead. My father kept blankets in the boot of the car. Had I gone with them I would have carried her with me to the farmhouse nearby. They wouldn’t let me see her afterwards, when I screamed until my voice was lost and then did not speak again for a long time.”

“Did they catch him?” Will asked after minutes of silence.

“Of course,” Hannibal replied, the words bringing him back closer to the present. “It was the Eastern Bloc, informants would know anything given time. But he was son of someone rather important, so he disappeared and everything was settled unofficially.”

“What happened to you?” 

“I was sent to a State orphanage. It was two years before my uncle managed to retrieve me and took me to live with him in Paris. I did not speak for the entire time.”

Will saw Hannibal as the child he would have been then, thin and tall and silent. He saw him alone in a room full of sleeping children, building halls and worlds inside his own mind to keep himself removed from that unreal reality, so different from the life he had been used to. He saw the older boys backing Hannibal into corners, the fists and bloody noses and the bruises meant to drag screams from his silence. The quiet places Hannibal would have found to be on his own.

“There was a nurse at the orphanage when I first arrived, Lithuanian was not her first language. I saw the notes she had written about me. I realised later that she had meant to write a variant of the phrase ‘consumed by grief’ to describe my state of mind. But she wrote ‘valgyti gedėjimas’. I thought she meant I had eaten grief, that I had consumed it.”

Will felt the emptiness slipping deeper, the gaping loneliness of loss. The silent sobbing and dry retching. The feeling of being filled by absence.

“How long did it take you to find him?” Will asked, voice still gentle but with a quiet anger Hannibal had heard when Will had spoken about the Vergers. 

Hannibal smiled faintly at the question, knowing he would have asked the same.

“Oh, many years. I had nearly finished medical school.”

Will shifted his gaze to look into the middle distance towards the windows. His face was stiff, eyes wide. Hannibal knew he wanted to know the answer without having to ask the question.

“I cut out his tongue and forced him to eat it.”

Will continued staring at the window for a while. A breeze picked up the curtain and set the linen moving in a small stuttering arc. Will hadn’t realised his hand had slipped from Hannibal’s, was instead gripping the bed sheet. He saw the scalpel, the clamp to hold the artery. The bloodied nose which had forced the man to open his mouth, to chew. 

“Good. I would have done the same.”

He had spoken so quietly Hannibal had held his own breath to catch the words.

Will stood up, went to the window and pulled back the curtain with a sharp tug. The pale sun lit his shoulders, muscles tense and held tight. He turned, snapped up the towel from the bed and went into the bathroom. 

Hannibal closed his eyes, tried to centre his thoughts. He let the sounds of the driving water from the shower drown out the memory of his own scream; the last sound he had made as a child.


End file.
